Richard Ford - Rock Springs

“It needs a woman’s touch,” Bon said and winked at me. She was not really bad looking, even though she was a little heavy. The camouflage paste on her face made her look a little like a clown, but you could tell she had a nice face.

“I’m just about to leave,” I said and reached for the flask, but Phyllis put it back in her hunting jacket. “I’m just getting things organized back in the back.”

“Do you have a car?” Phyllis said.

“I’m getting antifreeze put in it,” I said. “It’s down at the BP. It’s a blue Camaro. You probably passed it. Are you girls married?” I was happy to steer away from my own troubles.

Bon and Phyllis exchanged a look of annoyance, and it disappointed me. I was disappointed to see any kind of displeasure cloud up on Bon’s nice round features.

“We’re married to a couple of rubber-band salesmen down in Petersburg. That’s across the state line,” Phyllis said. “A real pair of monkeys, if you know what I mean.”

I tried to imagine Bonnie’s and Phyllis’s husbands. I pictured two skinny men wearing nylon jackets, shaking hands in the dark parking lot of a shopping mall in front of a bowling alley bar. I couldn’t imagine anything else. “What do you think about Gainsborough?” Phyllis said. Bon was just smiling at me now.

“I don’t know him very well,” I said. “He told me he was a direct descendant of the English painter. But I don’t believe it.”

“Neither do I,” said Bonnie and gave me another wink.

“He’s farting through silk,” Phyllis said.

“He has two children who come snooping around here sometimes,” I said. “One’s a dancer in the city. And one’s a computer repairman. I think they want to get in the house and live in it. But I’ve got the lease.”

“Are you going to stiff him?” Phyllis said.

“No. I wouldn’t do that. He’s been fair to me, even if he lies sometimes.”

“He’s farting through silk,” Phyllis said.

Phyllis and Bonnie looked at each other knowingly. Out the little picture window I saw it had begun to snow, just a mist, but unmistakable.

“You act to me like you could use a good snuggle,” Bon said, and she broke a big smile at me so I could see her teeth. They were all there and white and small. Phyllis looked at Bonnie without any expression, as if she’d heard the words before. “What do you think about that?” Bonnie said and sat forward over her big knees.

At first I didn’t know what to think about it. And then I thought it sounded pretty good, even if Bonnie was a little heavy. I told her it sounded all right with me.

“I don’t even know your name,” Bonnie said, and stood up and looked around the sad little room for the door to the back.

“Henderson,” I lied. “Lloyd Henderson is my name. I’ve lived here six months.” I stood up.

“I don’t like Lloyd ,” Bonnie said and looked at me up and down now that I was up, in my bathrobe. “I think I’ll call you Curly, because you’ve got curly hair. As curly as a Negro’s,” she said and laughed so that she shook under her clothes.

“You can call me anything you want,” I said and felt good.

“If you two’re going into the other room, I think I’m going to clean some things up around here,” Phyllis said. She let her big hand fall on the davenport arm as if she thought dust would puff out. “You don’t care if I do that, do you, Lloyd?”

“Curly,” said Bonnie, “say Curly.”

“No, I certainly don’t,” I said, and looked out the window at the snow as it began to sift over the field down the hill. It looked like a Christmas card.

“Then don’t mind a little noise,” she said and began collecting the cups and plates on the coffee table.

Without her clothes on Bonnie wasn’t all that bad looking. It was just as though there were a lot of heavy layers of her, but at the middle of all those layers you knew she was generous and loving and as nice as anybody you’d ever meet. She was just fat, though probably not as fat as Phyllis if you’d put them side by side.

A lot of clothes were heaped on my bed and I put them all on the floor. But when Bon sat on the cover she sat on a metal tie tack and some pieces of loose change and she yelled and laughed, and we both laughed. I felt good.

“This is what we always hope we’ll find in the woods,” Bonnie said and giggled. “Somebody like you.”

“Same here,” I said. It wasn’t at all bad to touch her, just soft everywhere. I’ve often thought that fat women might be better because they don’t get to do it so much and have more time to sit around and think about it and get ready to do it right.

“Do you know a lot of funny stories about fatties,” Bonnie asked.

“A few,” I said. “I used to know a lot more, though.” I could hear Phyllis out in the kitchen, running water and shuffling dishes around in the sink.

“My favorite is the one about driving the truck,” Bonnie said.

I didn’t know that one. “I don’t know that one,” I said.

“You don’t know the one about driving the truck?” she said, surprised and astonished.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Maybe I’ll tell you sometime, Curly,” she said. “You’d get a big kick out of it.”

I thought about the two men in the nylon jackets shaking hands in the dark parking lot, and I decided they wouldn’t care if I was doing it to Bonnie or to Phyllis, or if they did they wouldn’t find out until I was in Florida and had a car. And then Gainsborough could explain it to them, along with why he hadn’t gotten his rent or his utilities. And maybe they’d rough him up before they went home.

“You’re a nice-looking man,” Bonnie said. “A lot of men are fat, but you’re not. You’ve got arms like a wheelchair athlete.”

I liked that. It made me feel good. It made me feel reckless, as if I had killed a deer myself and had a lot of ideas to show to the world.

“Ibroke one dish,” Phyllis said when Bonnie and I were back in the living room. “You probably heard me break it. I found some Magic Glue in the drawer, though, and it’s better now than ever. Gainsborough’ll never know.”

While we were gone, Phyllis had cleaned up almost everything and put away all the dishes. But now she had on her camouflage coat and looked like she was ready to leave. We were all standing in the little living room, filling it, it seemed to me, right up to the walls. I had on my bathrobe and felt like asking them to stay over. I felt like I could grow to like Phyllis better in a matter of time, and maybe we would eat some of the deer for Thanksgiving. Outside, snow was all over everything. It was too early for snow. It felt like the beginning of a bad winter.

“Can’t I get you girls to stay over tonight?” I said and smiled hopefully.

“No can do, Curly,” Phyllis said. They were at the door. Through the three glass portals I could see the buck lying outside in the grass with snow melting in its insides. Bonnie and Phyllis had their guns back over their shoulders. Bonnie seemed genuinely sorry to be leaving.

“You should see his arms,” she was saying and winked at me a last time. She had on her lumberjack’s jacket and her orange cushion fastened to her belt loops. “He doesn’t look strong. But he is strong. Oh my God! You should see his arms,” she said.

I stood in the door and watched them. They had the deer by the horns and were pulling him off down the road toward their car.

“You be careful, Lloyd,” Phyllis said. Bonnie smiled over her shoulder.

“I certainly will,” I said. “You can count on me.”

I closed the door, then went and stood in the little picture window watching them walk down the road to the fence, sledding the deer through the snow, making a swath behind them. I watched them drag the deer under Gainsborough’s fence, and laugh when they stood by the car, then haul it up into the trunk and tie down the lid with string. Hie deer’s head stuck out the crack to pass inspection. They stood up then and looked at me in the window and waved, each of them, big wide waves. Phyllis in her camouflage and Bonnie in her lumberjack’s jacket. And I waved back from inside. Then they got in their car, a new red Pontiac, and drove away.